By 1996, the function of cookies had become a contested public policy issue. Federal Trade Commission workshops in 1996 and 1997 discussed proposals that would assign control of all personal information to users by default with a simple automated protocol. Advertisers bitterly contested this scheme, collaborating instead to avert government regulation by forming a “self-regulating” association known as the Network Advertising Initiative. Still, in June 2000 the Clinton administration banned cookies from all federal websites, and by April 2001, three bills before Congress included provisions to regulate cookies.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 272